World's Fair 2025
AI powered entomology: Lessons from millions of AI code reviews — Tomas Reimers, Graphite
Overview
This talk explores the challenges and opportunities of using AI, specifically Large Language Models (LLMs), for code review. It highlights that while LLMs can identify bugs, their effectiveness is limited by the type of feedback they provide and the user's receptiveness to it. The core thesis is that by understanding the different categories of bugs and user preferences, AI can be trained to provide more valuable and actionable code review comments.
Who should watch
- AI Engineers
- Product Managers
- Software Developers
- Anyone building or integrating AI into developer tools
- Teams struggling with the quality of AI-generated code
- Those looking to improve code review processes
Key takeaways
- The increasing use of AI in code generation has led to a rise in bugs, necessitating AI-powered solutions for bug detection.
- LLMs can identify bugs, but early attempts often produced frustrating or unhelpful comments, such as stylistic suggestions or requests for documentation that were not contextually relevant.
- Code review comments can be categorized along two axes: what LLMs can catch versus what they cannot, and what humans want to receive versus what they do not.
- Humans often prefer comments related to tribal knowledge or historical context, which LLMs struggle to infer, while LLMs can easily generate comments on code cleanliness and best practices, which humans may find pedantic.
- A significant portion of human comments (around 50%) lead to changes within the same pull request, indicating a baseline for actionable feedback.
- By refining prompts and focusing LLMs on generating comments within their capabilities and aligned with human preferences, it's possible to achieve similar or better actionable feedback rates.
- Measuring the success of AI code review involves tracking user feedback (upvotes/downvotes) and the rate at which comments lead to code changes.
- *AI can find bugs, but the quality of feedback is crucial.*
Notable quotes
Tomas Reimers stated, *AI can find bugs.*
He also noted, *humans want to receive from an LLM and humans don't want to receive from an LLM.*
Unofficial community note. Prefer the recording for nuance.